Mechanical Failure

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To my wife, for whom my military life wasn’t always this funny. Thanks for sticking with me.

Asses to Ashes

“I don’t like the looks of this, Rogers,” Dorsey said in a sort of depressed whine. “There are pirates here.”

“Of course there are pirates here,” Rogers said, looking out the window at the formation of ships floating in front of them. “I invited them. I invited two groups of pirates here. How the hell else do you expect us to make money off this transfer?”

Dorsey looked at him, mostly expressionless except for the heavy-lidded stare that he seemed to have been practicing all his life. He punched a couple of the instruments on the panel and sighed.

“I don’t like pirates,” Dorsey said.

Dealing with intergalactic space pirates was difficult enough; dealing with intergalactic space pirates with the most cowardly copilot Rogers had ever hired was a whole new level of ass pain.

“They don’t really advertise themselves as likeable people,” Rogers said. “And I didn’t hire you to like them. I hired you to help me make a lot of good money off a lot of bad people. So just keep the controls steady while I work my magic.”

A beep on the panel told him that he had an incoming transmission, and Rogers keyed it in. A gruff, inarticulate voice crackled over one of his several independent communication systems—Rogers had it configured so he could hear everything at once but had to switch channels to transmit. He didn’t want either of the two groups to hear what he was saying to the other.

“You sure this is the right place?” asked a member of the Purveyors of Vitriol, one of the pirate groups.

“Of course I’m sure it’s the right place,” Rogers said with a practiced scoff of indignation.